I didn't even know the existence of the village of Westmont until very recently, but ever since I read about the suburban community west of Chicago on Drivethru (scroll down to Gino's comment), I'd been very curious. Apparently, there's a significant Taiwanese population in Westmont, which gave rise to something called "International Mall." I learned, from stray online bits, that the International Mall has a decent Taiwanese supermarket and a food court that offers weekend breakfast. Reading one reviewer on Yelp, who says the weekend breakfast is the "closest thing to an authentic Chinese breakfast" beside sailing across the Pacific to Asia, I almost drooled onto my keyboard: fried dough dipped in sweetened soy milk... chive buns... it sounded too good to be true. I just had to go.

The problem is that it's so out of the way, if not far away. By the intersection of Routes 83 (Kingrey) and 34 (Ogden), the Mall is at least 45 minutes drive from where I live. Driving out there just to get breakfast seemed, as appealing as an authentic Taiwanese breakfast was, a bit much. So, when we decided to spend what was possibly the last day of summer exploring the nearby Morton Arboretum, I grabbed the occasion. Drawing the plan couldn't have been easier: we'd catch the fried dough breakfast at the Mall, drive fifteen minutes to the Arboretum and spend a quiet day communing with the artificial nature.

Once at the Mall, we checked out the Whole Grain Fresh Market on the eastern end. Though much smaller if compared to Jewel and other chain supermakets, the place was overwhelming: an entire aisle was dedicated to noodles of different ingredients, shapes and sizes while another was occupied by more Chinese dried goods than you can imagine. Cookies and sweets spilled out of the two rows of shelves dedicated to them, and were pressing onto a few shelves in the front. At least 20 different kinds of rice--red rice, black sweet rice, black wild rice, Jasmine rice, short grain rice, long grain sweet rice...--were prominently featured by the entrance. But the most overwhelming was the collection of mostly Chinese sauces that occupied a whole aisle. Many of the sauces were familiar to us (sa cha djan, to ban djan, chi ma djan, etc.), but so many others were utterly mysterious and esoteric.

Abalone cookies/

We picked up a few confectionery ingredients (black sesame powder, almond powder and black sugar) and a few Chinese cookies. One of them, the abalone-shaped cookies, had quite an interesting ingredients list that included shallots and Chinese spices. The unique, sweet-and-salty flavor of the cookies went surprisingly well with jasmine tea. (I had them with and without the tea, and discovered that enjoying them with tea is the way to go.) I'm not sure if I would know that it was the shallots if it weren't on the ingredients list, but the cookies do carry a faint, fleeting aroma of the shallots, making it quite unusual in the U.S., I'm sure.

The cookies were interesting and quite tasty, but there were reasons for not picking up other things at the market. For one, it was too hot in the car for anything requiring refrigeration to survive for too long, but for another, the market's fresh produce and meats could have been fresher. "H Mart definitely elevated our expectations from ethnic markets," Patrick said, and I agree.

In the light of the freshness, variety and quantity of the produce, meat and fish at H Mart, the Whole Grain Fresh Market was sub-par. (Ethnic markets do face the indomitable challenge of a smaller clientele and a slower turnover rate as a result, which favors the behemoths like the H Mart--I know. But still, selling moldy mushrooms and gray beef didn't appeal to me too much.) Even with the occasional organic produce (as to be expected from their name evoking such organic-centered places as Whxxe Foods and Wxxd Oats, I suppose), I wasn't impressed by the Whole Grain market on this regard. But it's okay--the true joy of the International Mall was its food court.

To be continued (because I'm mean).

Bitter melon was unknown to the mainland Japanese until very recently. Although bitter melons have been grown in southern Kyushu as well as in Okinawa, it was only after the Okinawan food boom in the late '90s that the most Japanese people came to contact with this easy-to-grow, fun-to-cook vegetable. Nowadays, though, it seems that quite a number of the mainland Japanese are addicted to the biting bitterness of bitter melons. When Patrick had a stir-fried bitter melon in oyster sauce at a restaurant in Chicago's Chinatown, he, too, got addicted.

Bitter melons have knobby, grooved skin that's kind of fun to look at.

I myself am not too big on bitter melons--or so I thought. The bitterness was a bit too much for me. But the other day, I saw a large heap of pretty good-looking bitter melons at H Mart, and decided to get one for my beloved husband (haha). Since I had some pork belly and fried tofu at hand, I decided to cook gôya champloo, an Okinawa-style stir-fried bitter melon, for dinner. (Gôya refers to bitter melon in Okinawan language/dialect.)

Soaking the bitter melon in salt water can reduce the bitterness a bit.

It turned out surprisingly well: I actually liked the dish. And it wasn't "despite" the bitterness, but "because of." It was easy to make with relatively cheap ingredients, too, and I suspect that I might start buying more bitter melon that I would have imagined just a few days ago.

Gôya Champloo (Okinawa-style stir-fried bitter melon; for two generous servings)

• 1 bitter melon
• 1/3 inch carrot, julienned
• 3 ounces pork belly meat, thinly sliced
• 4 ounces thick, deep-fried tofu ("atsu-age"), cut into thin, bite-sized pieces
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dashi powder
• 1 small handful of bonito flakes ("katsuo-bushi")

Cut the bitter melon lengthwise in half and remove the pulp, using a spoon. slice them into about 1/5 inch thickness. Soak the cut bitter melon in salt water, if you prefer mild bitterness. (I soaked my bitter melon pieces for about 30 minutes, and it nicely cut down on the bitterness.) Cut all the ingredients as shown above.

Heat the oil in a frying pan, and start with the pork belly. Once the pork is mostly cooked, set it aside. Add carrots to the pan, followed by bitter melon. When the vegetables are mostly cooked through, add the fried tofu. Stir-fry carefully, so the tofu won't break into tiny bits. Then put the meat back into the pan.

Season with soy sauce, dashi powder and salt. Quickly follow the seasoning with beaten egg. (Give the egg a bit of time to cook before stirring here.) Sprinkle with bonito flakes, give it one last mix and serve.

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NHK, the Japanese national TV network, broadcast a drama series set in Okinawa, and within that drama, they introduced a silly little character called "gôya man." It's an anthropomorphized bitter melon with an yellow helmet--and, well, it's pretty cute. If you feel like it, go to Japanese google and copy and paste this: ゴーヤーマン.

Pickled nozawana was one of the few things that I'd been craving for since I moved to Chicago. It's very difficult to find a fresh one, since the pickle turns sour pretty quickly and (not surprisingly) it doesn't seem to be produced in the U.S. So, I was literary elated when I found a bag of fresh-looking pickled nozawana at H Mart yesterday. It'd been more than four years since I had my last ration of this wonderful pickle.

As you can see in the photograph, fresh pickled nozawana has this beautiful, deep but vibrant green hue. When it turns sour, the green becomes dull and an unconcealable tinge of brown sets in. Not that there aren't people who prefer aged nozawana that's turned sour (quite a few Japanese people do, in fact), but I'm just not big on that sour taste in aged pickles in general.

Nozawana is a crunchy, leaf vegetable that belongs to the turnip family. For something in the turnip family, it grows rather big: a fully grown nozawana can reach three feet. Preferring chilly and misty climate of the highland, nozawana is a specialty of the village of Nozawa, and grown in the surrounding Shin-etsu region. Although I did come across a few American seed companies (such as the Kitazawa Seed Co. in California) that distributes nozawana seeds, I've never seen one being sold fresh anywhere around Chicago.

Nozawana has a distinctive flavor that's difficult to describe. (Well, well, this shows my limitation...) The closest vegetable I've had in the U.S. is the generically called "potherb" stir-fried with shredded pork, served at the Lao Szechuan (a surprisingly stylish website they have!). Whatever they're calling "potherb" has a different texture from nozawana--the one at Lao Szechuan seems denser and less crunchy, but the flavors are very close. Strange for a vegetable, both nozawana and the "potherb" have a hint of meaty umami. My amateur's guess is that they have some amino acids that produce this complex, meat-like flavor.

Guessing aside, nozawana is just really tasty. If you find one on a restaurant's menu or in a Japanese grocer's fridge, grab and try it. I'd planned an American-style dinner for yesterday, but the nozawana changed it all: I had to have rice, with the nozawana, so I did. Ah, I could have eaten the whole bag in one sitting, with maybe three bowls of rice! I didn't need anything else (although I did behave myself and had a balanced meal). I hope Patrick wasn't too taken aback by my uncharacteristically ferocious defense when he tried to snatch the last piece of nozawana--I just had to have that one, too. It's mine. It's all mine...

My happiest day would be when one of the area farmers start growing nozawana and sell them in farmers' markets...

After the recent post about spaghetti peperoncino with cabbage and sardines, I read a bit about Moroccan sardines. Initially, I was curious about the local method of cooking sardines. Though I couldn't find too many references on line about Moroccan way of preparing sardines, I did find a few interesting articles about Moroccan sardine industry.

According to this article, Morocco is now the leading supplier of sardines in the European market, beating the competition from Spain and Portugal. (So, maybe, the tin I picked up, although it bore an exotic image of turbaned man, was mainly intended for the American/European market, not for the domestic Moroccan market.) To consolidate their position as the leading exporter of sardines, Reuters reported in 2004, Morocco apparently had discontinued the fishing accord with the EU in the late '90s, banning foreign fishing boats in its waters. To the same end, Morocco heavily subsidizes the Moroccan fishing industry.

What complicates the political ethics of eating a tin of Sultan's sardines, though, is the fact that the sardine fishery takes place along the coast of the Western Sahara, which both the Moroccan government and the separatist Polisario movement claim as their own. According to the same Reuters article on Planet Ark (which is an Australian environmental non-profit), the Polisario Front, with its base inside the Algerian border, has been battling the Moroccan government over the control of the Western Sahara. Since 1991, the UN has been trying to set up an autonomous political entity in the region for the Saharawi peoples, but it hasn't seen success. So, the very existence of the Moroccan fishing industry in the area is in itself a sort of political statement on the part of the Moroccan government, as well as an important economic stabilizer that the government can point to as a proof of its success in guiding the region.

Why this area has come under the Moroccan control and why the Moroccan control has been in dispute have a much longer history: the area was not under any "nation state" as was imagined by the European colonizers back when France and Spain were busy setting up marionette colonial governments all over Africa. Since the colonizers didn't have the sensitivity to perceive or acknowledge the often blurry "zones of tribal influences" in the area, the arbitrary boundaries they drew on the Saharan sand cut through these zones. (Sounds awfully familiar, right?)

There's a much longer history that seems really interesting (to me) before that, of course, of the Islamic influences and the native Berber peoples, but that's way beyond I can sum up here. (Plus I feel I should know more before writing it up.) Meanwhile, two Wikipedia article--one on the Polisario Front and the other on Saharawi peoples--were intriguing and helpful. I'm all for just enjoying the sensations of what's in the plate in front of me and not think about it, but at the same time I can't deny my fascination with the sudden, explosive connection to history and politics that a mere tin of sardines can produce--with just a little bit of curiosity on my part.

With the exception of canned tuna, I've always been afraid of canned fish. My father used to bring home cans of mackerel in miso and sardines in sweet soy sauce to accompany his evening beer, and sometimes he offered a piece or two to me. At the tip of his chopsticks, these fish pieces glittered with oil and gooey sauce, reflecting the fluorescent lamp above our dining table. Often spattered with stray bits of strangely metallic skin and unidentifiable mixture of bones and guts, the fish out of the can never looked attractive to my child's eyes. My revulsion reached the crest when the fish was shoved just under my nose, where the fishy smell became almost overwhelming. I would recoil from the offending piece and make a face, as my father, now tipsy, placed the piece in his mouth, loudly lamenting his daughter's lack of appreciation but his face betraying his amusement.

So, it's a mystery that I started buying tinned seafood lately. The first was the smoked oyster in a tin that I picked up at a Vietnamese market along Broadway. Perhaps because the smoked oyster pasta came out well, I became bold and bought a tin of sardines next. And it was no ordinary tin of sardines--it was "Sultan's" sardines in chili oil, imported from Morocco.

There's a good chance that I was knocked out by the awesomely nostalgic package. It conjured up an image of a small village store with dust-covered merchandise slumbering in the darkness, sheltered from the sweltering heat outside. The Arabic writing on the other side of the box only added to my exoticism. The problem is--exoticism wasn't quite enough to make me open the tin. Once I opened it, I'd have only so many hours to use the fish before it goes bad. So, the tin sat in the cupboard for a few weeks before I finally made up my mind to use it.

When I opened the tin, I was surprised by the generous size of the fish inside. Somehow, I was expecting anchovy-sized fish cluttering the space, but instead, what I found was two plump pieces of sardines almost bursting out of the tiny container. Despite the annoyance of scales left on the fish, the small nibble I had of the sardine was fantastic. I had expected it to be fishy, oily, salty and maybe somewhat stale, but it was none of these. Thinking that I could eat this right out of the can, maybe on crispy toasts, or with grated daikon and ginger, I started cutting the cabbage--the other main ingredient of the evening's meal.

Sultan's Peperoncino (Spaghetti Peperoncino with Cabbage and Moroccan Sardines) (for two)

• 1 tin Moroccan sardines in chili oil
• 3-4 large cabbage leaves, chopped
• 6 oz spaghetti (I used whole wheat, just because)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon crushed dried chili pepper (fresh ones would be nicer)
• 1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
• salt to taste

In a large pot, boil plenty of water. When the water is boiling, add a generous pinch of salt and add spaghetti. Cook to al dente.

Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic and chili pepper. When it starts to smell nice, add the sardines. After a minute or two, add the cabbage and stir-fry them, crushing the sardines into bite-sized pieces. Salt to taste.

Transfer the pasta into the pan, mix, and serve when the pasta has a nice coat of olive oil.

Since the sardines weren't super-salty anchovies, the pasta came out to be a little milder than I'd expected. It could have used some more salty kick, perhaps, but it was a pretty nice comfort meal. I'm still not sure if I would gladly join my father in his occasional fish-in-a-tin drinking spree, but I'd be definitely buying these Sultan's Moroccan sardines again and again. Next time, I want to try cooking something Japanese with them--perhaps my father can enjoy it with me.

What I didn't realize while in Japan was how many aromatic ingredients the Japanese traditional cooking relies on. When I thought of Japanese cuisine, I usually wouldn't think of herbs and spices--I was more inclined to associate them with exotic cuisines like Thai and Indian, not my mundane Japanese food. But living in a foreign country, where the mainstay of Japanese herbs and spices are hard to come by, has made me realize that there are, indeed, a lot of aromatics involved in the Japanese cooking. And by gory, good ones are hard to find.

Ginger is probably the easiest to find, although the "shin-shoga," fresh ginger shoot just growing out of a thin, not-yet-plump ginger root (that looks a bit like fa fingerling potato)--a delicacy that powerfully signifies the advent of early summer--seems impossible to find. Dried spices like sansho (prickly ash) are also stocked in Japanese markets. When it comes to fresh herbs, things get a bit tougher. Fresh herbs--like cilantro-like mitsuba, sharp and tangy kinome (young leaves of sansho; prickly ash), and pale but potent myoga--are sometimes found in Mitsuwa, a large, suburban Japanese market, but they're invariably expensive and I can't say they're the freshest of all. Citrus fruits are the worst: the USDA doesn't seem to like the idea of importing of citrus fruits of any kind from abroad (which is not surprising, considering the danger of the citrus canker). So, if I wanted yuzu, sudachi, or kabosu, which all have generically citrusy yet unique flavors, I don't have any choice but to go for overpriced and odd-tasting bottled juices.

Until very recently, shiso was one of the elusive herbs. (It's the green leaf with rugged edges and pointed tip that you sometimes find on your sushi plate.) Granted, many Japanese people grow their own shiso (including my green-thumbed mom whose green genes I don't seem to have inherited), and I could grow my own--if only the apartment were a bit sunnier. Granted, too, shiso is available at Mitsuwa for not so bad of a price at about $1 for 10 leaves. But somehow, getting the shiso from Mitsuwa doesn't seem to work for me. Perhaps it's the precise calculation that each leaf costs 10 cents that makes me reluctant to use them extravagantly. Combined with their short shelf life (about three days before dark marks appear), my strange reluctance to use them in large quantities often leaves three or four dark, soggy leaves perishing in my fridge. So, as much as I like their minty and floral aroma, I've mostly stayed away from shiso. Until recently, that was.

When I was studying the perky herbs in the Tai Nam food market on Broadway the other day, I saw a bag of "pink mint" and picked it up. On the front, the leaves were green; on the back, purple. They looked like a smaller and little bit sturdier version of the beloved shiso leaves. I snuck a glance up and down the aisle, and seeing that there weren't anyone around, I pinched the tip of a leaf that was sticking out of the package. Sure enough, the leaf smelled exactly like shiso. I picked up a package, biked home and started cooking. This time, with a large bowl full of pseudo-shiso bursting out of the tight plastic bag, I felt I could be extravagant with them.

I had a handful of shiitake mushrooms and about half a pound of ground chicken in the fridge. An idea quickly formed in my head. I started by chopping up a generous--truly generous--amount of pink mint. The back side of the leaves were beautiful--its purple, tinged with green and a hint of gold, was almost ethereal. I admired the color for a moment, then mixed the chopped shiso leaves with ground chicken, an egg, some corn starch, sesame oil, salt and pepper. Stuffed onto the shiitake mushrooms and sautéed in a pan, the shiso-infused chicken meatballs became a refreshing and satisfying entrée. For the sauce, I mixed equal parts of soy sauce and mirin with a chopped pickled plum. There was so much pseudo-shiso that I even used them for garnish (gasp!). It felt good to use my favorite Japanese herb without worrying about the cost and calculating how many there are left in the fridge.

As it turned out later, pink mint (or tia to in phonetic Vietnamese) was a popular Vietnamese herb among the ex-pat Japanese people craving for the familiar taste of shiso. It was kind of funny to see so many food blogs scattered all over the world--from Bangkok to Paris--by Japanese cooks substituting shiso with tia to. So many of them expressed delight when finding this superb substitute for the familiar herb, often after a long search and an even longer dry spell. Though I don't know any of the bloggers personally, I felt a strange connection, maybe even a camaraderie of some sort, with the fellow ex-pats. All thanks to my unplanned move to a foreign country full of ethnic immigrants.

I don't like oysters.

In fact, it's probably safe to say that I positively hate them.

Not that I've ever gotten sick from one, but I'm repulsed by the bitter, briny taste of their slimy guts. I can't eat them in any way--deep-fried, cooked with rice, in a hot pot, let alone raw.

So, I don't know why I decided to pick up a tin of smoked oysters at the Tai Nam Food Market yesterday. I was wandering up and down their maze-like aisles filled with exotic food stuffs--like canned shrimp paste, shredded young coconuts meat in syrup, a dozen different rice papers. Then I saw tins of oysters. Some were as is, others were treated: cured, salted, and smoked. Somehow, I wanted one. I didn't know what I would do with it, but before I knew it, the tin was in the basket. I really don't know why.

It couldn't have been the package design, either!

I wandered around some more (actually for an hour or so--the place is a wonderland!), got a Vietnamese lunch box at Ba Le Sandwich Shop on Broadway, had it on the beach, and biked home. Then I had to face the small, nonthreatening-looking tin of oysters. What would I do with it? To make matters worse, Patrick isn't big of oysters, either. I should open the tin and see what it tastes like, I thought, but didn't have the balls to do it. The tin sat on the kitchen counter as I googled "smoked oyster" in the dining area. Having had virtually zero experience with oysters (let alone a good one), I needed some idea of what flavors would go well with the oysters. Someone baked the oysters in its shell with Vietnamese chili sauce, quail eggs and scallions. That sounded good. Someone else baked a flan with smoked oysters and parmesan cheese. That might work, too. Yet another made a pasta with oyster cream sauce. Hmm.

Then the idea struck. A double oyster linguini! I'd picked up a pack of exceptionally perky oyster mushrooms at the same market. I could pair the oysters with oyster mushrooms. Ha. Obviously I was in a rare, bold mood for a dish based purely on a (bad) joke. Cream sauce should work fine with both the oysters and the mushrooms, but I needed something punchy, something that'd stand up against the oysters' strong flavor. Black peppers? Garlic? But they didn't seem to be the one, although I did end up using them in the final product. Further googling didn't yield too many useful suggestions, so I was left to my own devices.

I opened the can and was amused to see its content faithfully mirroring the rather unappetizing graphic on the box. Inside, greenish brown baby oysters about half the size of my thumb were squished against each other in three neat rows. The texture seemed to be very close to that of cooked liver (something else I'm not terribly fond of). Am I being too daring? I wondered. All the recent news of Chinese poisonous products--food or not--started circling around in my head. What do I do? For an answer, I stared at the oysters. Look thy enemy in the eye, and thou shall defeat it, right?

The oysters were preserved in cotton seed oil, which bore a yucky green tint from the oyster juice. The oil might contain the strongest flavor of the oysters; something a real oyster lover would treasure, I thought, but since we weren't the most enthusiastic lovers of oysters, I figured I could drain the oil to tame the flavor. I rinsed the oysters with a bit of leftover whiskey, hoping that the whiskey might add some interesting flavor compatible with the oysters, while rinsing off the excess pungency.

The bean-looking thing in the middle is the smoked oyster bit.

Following the usual steps for a cream-based sauce, I made the double-oyster pasta in about fifteen minutes. In the final product, I didn't taste much of the whiskey, but rinsing part seemed to have worked pretty well; the oysters had become surprisingly edible. There was a hint of their oceanic and bitter flavor, but it was tame enough that we, the two oyster haters, could actually enjoy the sauce infused with oysters. The smoky note, which became the primary flavor, also helped tame the wild oysters for us. We surprised ourselves that we could actually enjoy oysters, but there was room for improvement. There was something lacking in the pasta. I thought something more spicy--like crushed chili pepper or even curry powder--might liven up the complex but somewhat flat sauce. Patrick thought more cream might be good. Writing this now, I wonder something even crazier--like cherry--might work with them or not. Though my first experiment wasn't a success to be announced with fanfare, I'm definitely going to play with this cheap ingredient more. (A tin costs about $1.50.) When winter comes, I might try Patrick's other suggestion: a seafood chowder with the smoked oysters added to the base as a smooth purée.

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Tai Nam Food Market
4925 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL

Continued from this post about my recent "discovery" of Albany Park.

Our little Albany Park exploration (over one afternoon and one evening) was heavily Middle-Eastern. A day after the happy encounter with the Al-Khyam Bakery and Grocery, we went to the nearby Noon-o-Kabab for dinner. The recently renovated interior of the Persian restaurant featured Persian-themed tile work on the wall and a few colorful knickknacks like a hookah pipe and musical instruments on the display shelf above the bar counter. At around 7:30 on a Monday night, the dining room was pretty crowded. Quite a few Asian-looking diners (including me, I suppose), along with the usual suspects of European-looking and Middle-Eastern looking people, seemed to reflect the diversity of the neighborhood.

Ghomeh Sabzi

The thin, flavorful pita came with a small dish of onion, radish, parsley and feta. Patrick the cheese lover said the feta was great, but I liked the pita with onions. For the main, I tried Ghormeh Sabzi and Koubideh combo, while Patrick went for Koubideh and chicken combo. After reading Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, which traces the myriad origins of what we now grossly simplify as "Indian cuisine," I'd been curious to try some of the Persian foods that had a huge influence on the "Indian cuisine*" through the conquest of northern India by the Islamic and Persian-influenced Mughal Empire. Early Mugahli emperors, used to Persian cooking, brought expert Persian cooks with them to India, where they taught Indian cooks how to cook Persian food, and modified staple dishes to incorporate Indian ingredients and cooking methods. One of such influential items was the ghormeh sabzi--spinach, red beans and some beef bits stewed slowly until absolutely tender. It was an interesting experience; if no one told me that it was a Persian dish, I would have believed that the stewed dish was Indian.

Koubideh and Chicken Kabab

The rest of the meal was fantastic. The dill rice was so light and fluffy that I ate more than half of the huge heap though I usually give up at around 1/3. (Cooking the rice light and fluffy, by the way, is another Persian influence on the Indian cooking. For example, biryani, which most Americans equates with Indian rice, actually originated in Persia.) Koubideh, a skewer of ground beef broiled over charcoal fire, was incredibly juicy and beefy, with a strong hint of smokiness. Although the chicken may not have stood up to the Café Suron's divine chicken, Koubideh was pretty darn good.

After the meal, I was so stuffed that I had to take a walk around the neighborhood. The sun had set, and the western sky visible beyond the busy Lawrence avenue was a dreamy mixture of pink, mauve, orange and indigo. We wandered into the Lindo Michoacan, a Mexican supermarket, where I picked up a molinillo (a traditional stirring stick to make champurrado) for a whopping $3.50. (I've seen molinillos for around $25 in gourmet stores--though these are much more elaborately made.) Along Lawrence, there were Guatemalan bakery, Mexican restaurants, Chinese restaurants, Korean kitchen store, more Middle Eastern places, and lots and lots of people of all ages and ethnicities. Some young men boomed along the street in a pimped-up ghetto mobile, while elderly couples took a leisurely stroll and families in sedans and minivans crowded parking lots everywhere. It was quite chaotic, in a Devon-avenue sort of way, but the vibrancy felt good. After all, Rogers Park wasn't the only neighborhood that's really diverse and down-to-earth, without too much commercial flair of Lincoln Park and Lakeview, I thought. (I do enjoy cool new restaurants and oh-so-cute stores in more hip neighborhoods, but I'm always pestered by a slight sense of discomfort when I'm in these neighborhoods. I don't know why.)

Molinillo stick for making traditional Aztec hot chocolate.

When the evening light surrendered to the indigo darkness of the night, we turned around and headed back to the car. With the nightfall, the area around the Brown Line's Kimball station was starting to be a little bit more exciting than we'd want ourselves in, but in the daylight, we'd definitely come back for more exploration. (I'd spotted a few Korean stores that seemed to sell some Japanese ceramics, which I have a constant hankering for.)

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* Though I now understand, thanks to the book's author Lizzie Collingham, that there's no such thing as homogeneous "Indian cuisine" in the regionally diverse culinary universe of the Indian subcontinent, I still don't know how to bridge the gap between the widely acknowledged "Indian food" and the yet-obscure regional varieties of it. Saying "Indian food" seems too violent of a simplification, yet what else could I say? I definitely need to more about the food of the subcontinent to talk about it properly.

It's strange how spotty one's familiarity with her city of residence can be. As for me, I frequent only certain parts of Chicago and feel as if I knew Chicago pretty well. But every once in a while, the city opens up a whole new neighborhood in front of me and grins, challenging my rather arrogant notion that I already know the city. It's a good thing, I suppose, for finding yet another face of this city keeps me busy (with stores and restaurants to explore) and entertained. Albany Park has been one of those blind spots for me--and for Patrick as well. It's fairly close to Rogers Park, but somehow we'd totally missed the area. That changed last weekend, when we decided to bike down California after lunch at a fantastic Georgian bakery on Devon, just to see what it's like along the road.

Soon we switched to the bike path along the river, and found ourselves on Lawrence. Remembering that we'd seen a short, heavily Middle-Eastern stretch on Kedzie in a neighborhood that otherwise seemed mainly Latino and Korean, we decided to bike down Kedzie from there. Within a block or so, we saw the long, green awning of the Al Khyam Bakery and Grocery. Inside this dimly lit Lebanese grocer were row after row of Middle Eastern ingredients: grape leaves conserved in olive oil, bags of semolina flour (this seemed to be under their own name, along with many other grain-based products), myriad jars of spices and spice mixes, colorful boxes of sweets (which, of course, includes many flavors of halva), and various teas, just to name a few. In the back, huge chunks of zabiha/halal beef and lamb sat quietly in a large glass case, along with bucket-sized containers of different olives and pickles.

Lebanese butter cookies. Uh, they were divine!

The largest attraction of them all was, however, along the street-facing windows. By a tall, ancient iron oven, there was a few long showcases full of Middle-Eastern sweets, all of them gleaming with dewy honey. Some looked like familiar baklava, and some sported shredded philo dough delicately warpped around some divine mixture of nuts and honey, while others were shaped like flowers, with twisted philo dough gently cupping a few pieces of pistachios in the middle. They all looked absolutely gorgeous, but my eyes were pegged to a large, round, flat cake that I'd never seen before. When I asked the dark-haired guy behind the counter, he confessed that he didn't know how its name (that sounded like "kenafa") is spelled in English.

"I know it in French, Française," he said and smiled. He pointed at the cake in a large, shallow pan: "It has cheese inside." Wow. Cheese in Lebanese cake? I never knew.

"I'll probably be able to look it up online," I said. Certainly Française would be beyond me. Trying (in vain) to remember what crooked, colonial relationship Lebanon and France have had in the recent history, I jotted down "kenafa" in my notebook and asked for a small slice. (Later, through some googling, I found out that it was knafe, a Lebanese specialty made with fresh cheese called kenafa, semolina and honey.) Patrick asked for a piece of baklava.

"That's not baklava," the guy corrected. "It has cream in it." Cream? Wow.

Al-Khyam Bakery definitely extended beyond my limited knowledge of Middle-Eastern baking. Using dairy products (other than butter, I mean) in pastries was of course novel, but that was not all: they also had sublime butter cookies called "grhybe" or "ghoraibi." (It took me quite a while to figure out the correct spelling from what I scribbled in my notebook from the kind baker's pronunciation: goravy.) Both knafe and the cream-filled baklava impostor were very, very good, but the grhybe was a notch or two above them. I'm not sure how they make these awesome cookies, but it seemed to have two layers: the rough, nutty inside and the incredibly delicate, melt-in-your-mouth outside that resembled snow ball cookies. They were sweet, but not overwhelmingly so. Mary Luz Mejia of Suite 101 says that good Lebanese pastries can stand up against the world-renowned French pastry making, and I have to agree with her. The grhybe I had from the Al-Khyam was nothing short of excellent.

Al-Khyam had a small restaurant attached to it, and I'm curious to try their food in the near future. Also, according to this article, Al-Khyam's thin, Lebanese-style pita is a favorite of many Middle-Easterners living in the Chicago region. I have to try those, too... A day after we explored a bit of Albany Park, we went back to the area for a nice Persian dinner, but I'll write another post for that one; I suppose this is long enough.

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Al-Khyam Bakery and Grocery
4746 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago, IL (just south of Lawrence)
773.583.3099

Chili, originally grown in Latin America and "discovered" by the European invaders during the 15th and 16th centuries, is probably one of the most widespread ingredients in the world. It seems that a myriad of different chili "peppers" are cultivated and used pretty much everywhere in the world. (Though chili is often called a pepper, the two species aren't related.) Japan is not an exception; since the introduction of the red chili in the late 16th century, the spicy fruit has become an indispensable part of the Japanese traditional cuisine. According to an Wikipedia article, soon after its introduction to Japan, chili replaced black peppers, which had been introduced from Persia via China and widely used as the source of spicy heat. The fact that black peppers were more commonly used for seasoning udon noodles seem rather odd to the modern Japanese ears, because we're now so used to using chili for that purpose that using black pepper in udon almost sounds exotic and innovative.

Red chili gave rise to a very popular spice mix, "shichimi to-garashi." "Shichimi" means "seven flavors," while "to-garashi" means "foreign spicy stuff." In a culinary tradition that doesn't have too many other spice mixes, shichimi (as it's often called) is a curiosity. Because red chili was imported as a medicine, the shichimi was born in a pharmaceutical district of Tokyo called Yagenbori. ("Yagen" is a mortar that apothecaries used to grind medicinal herbs and spices.) In 1625, an apothecary mixed red chili with Szechuan peppers, mandarin orange peels, black sesame, poppy seeds, etc., all of which had purported medicinal value, to create a condiment with a health appeal. Thus created, shicnimi became a mainstay in the urban Edo culture where people sprinkled it generously in their soba noodles for an extra kick. I use shichimi in miso soup, especially when it contains chicken or pork; on soba and udon; and most frequently on kimpira veggies.

Amazingly enough, after nearly 400 years, the descendants of the original shichimi maker are still in the same business in Asakusa district of Tokyo. Their spice store, Yagenbori Nakajima Shoten, is considered to be one of the three most revered shichimi producers in Japan. Unfortunately, most people, including myself, rely on national brands like S&B, photographed above, for everyday use, but the flavors and aromas are much stronger in the freshly ground and freshly mixed shichimi sold at traditional shichimi stores.

When Patrick and I visited Sanja Matsuri (a huge, energetic festival in Asakusa) last year, we saw a stall selling the traditional shichimi. With boxes of colorful ingredients--red chili, golden sesame seeds, green nori and so on--and the old vendor guy in a traditional artisan outfit, the stall made me feel as if I'd slipped into the bustling streets of Edo, 300 years ago. The wonderful thing about these traditional stores and stalls is that you can have them make your shichimi according to your own taste. If you want it more citrusy, they'll add more orange peel. If you like heat, they'll increase the ratio of red chili. Furthermore, each store has its own recipe: Yawataya Isogoro in Nagano prefecture, for example, uses ginger and shiso, which gives their mix a refreshing fragrance. I believe there is a permanent stand along the Nakamise mall that leads up to the Asakusa Temple (Senso-ji), so if you'd like a taste of traditional Japanese spice mix, and happen to be in Japan, check out that store. Otherwise, shicnimi is available in small jars at Japanese grocery stores, and many of the Asian grocers as well.

It's hot. I know it's not that hot, relatively speaking, but I feel pretty hot. I suppose I've become sufficiently Chicagonized...

It's so hot that our dinner table frequently features chilled noodles. I used to buy pre-made package of chilled noodles (called "hiyashi chuuka," meaning "chilled Chinese noodles") from Mitsuwa, but recently I've been experimenting from scratch. My staple sauce for Chinese fusion chilled noodles has been varying mixtures of aromatic herbs and spices in soy sauce, vinegar and a bit of sugar and sesame oil, but recently I tried a different, less saucy version.

I used the shrimp noodles from the Viet Hoa Plaza (link via Chicagoist). These thin wheat noodles contain powdered shrimp, and release a subtle, oceany flavor when cooked. Because I wanted to make the sauce a lot simpler than my usual fair, I figured that extra shrimpy flavor in the noodles would be a nice addition.

Chilled Shrimp Noodles in Oyster Sauce with Sichuan Peppercorn (for two; approximate amount, as usual)

• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1/3 tablespoon oyster sauce
• salt to taste

It seems too simple to proudly present as a recipe... All you need to do is to boil the shrimp noodles, rinse them under cold running water (to give them a nice, resilient texture) and toss them in the sauce. The only twist I gave was a mixture of ground Sichuan (Szechuan or Szechwan) peppercorn and red chili peppers; I used a pinch each and pounded them in a mortar with a pestle. (For a Szechuan cole slow I made with this aromatic spice, see this post.)You can add whatever veggies you'd like to serve with it, but for this meal, I used a tomato and a few scallions.

The combination of two ocean-derived flavors--oyster sauce and shrimp noodles--turned out to be pretty good. Since most oyster sauces have sweetness added, this deceivingly simple list of ingredients can create a fairly complex mix of flavors. I really liked the dish; it was a nice departure from my usual fair of soy sauce, vinegar and lots of garlic and ginger. I'm definitely making this again this summer.

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Our Sichuan Peppercorn came from the always reliable Spice House.
1512 N. Wells St., Chicago, IL
312-274-0378

As the summer sun started to bake the region, Patrick and I joined Danielle and Margarette of Slow Food Chicago for a food tour of Little Village Today. We were ten minutes late to the meeting spot, in front of the Panadería La Baguette on the 26th street, but managed to join the tour before they headed into the Mexican bakery. The walking tour was along the 26th street, which gives you the impression of being in Mexico, with its Spanish signs and lots of street vendors of tamales and horchata. Many of the businesses we stopped at--La Baguette, Dulce Landia (a Mexican candy store chain), El Milagro tortilla factory, among others--weren't extremely new to us, since we live in a Latino-heavy neighborhood in Rogers Park. But we did get to try things we'd never had enough courage to try before.

Fresh-baked sweet bread waiting to be displayed at Panadería La Baguette

A worker at El Milagro tortilla factory swiftly packs bags of tortillas behind a large container of fresh masa

The fresh-off-the-oven tortillas we nibbled on in front of the tiny El Milagro store were wonderfully moist and flavorful. Though they demanded that we eat them with some salsa or mole, the yellow and white tortillas just baked in the factory at the back of the store were quite far from the stale ones you might find in your local Jewel store. Patrick and I usually get our tortilla fix from the Morse Mart, which stocks very fresh tortillas, but still the ones right off the factory tasted better.

As Chicagoans might remember, the shopping mall in which La Baguette does its business was recently in the news. In April, INS conducted a heavily armed raid on a storefront fake ID manufacturer in that mall. This raid had left a deep gash in the community of Little Village. According to some of the business owners, the area, which used to be always packed like festival days, are now deserted. "Everyone's scared," one of them said. Indeed, as we walked down the 26th street around 10 in the morning, it was eerily quiet. The mall's parking lot was only half full, and the wide sidewalks seemed vastly empty. Food vendors stood empty-handed at street corners, without customers.

"So we just made her day," someone joked, as we sipped champurrado from small plastic cups. "We might be her only customers today." She laughed, but there was something chilling about what was meant to be a joke. The champurrado itself--an Aztec-style hot chocolate thickened with masa and flavored with cinnamon--was quite good, though I'd prefer to have it during winter. We crossed the street and tried little bit of horchata--sweet drink made with rice flour--from another street vendor.

An horchata vendor at the corner of 26th and Kedzie (or Sawyer)

Dulce Landia feels like a dream jungle of various candies and colorful piñatas suspended from the ceiling.

We also nibbled on some imported Queso Oaxaca from Cremaria Santa Maria, a few gorditas from Aguascalientes (they allegedly invented this poor-man's feast of cooked meat and cheese in corn-based pocket bread) and a few different Mexican candies from Dulce Landia. Again, none of this was news to me, but it was fun to actually try things I'd been aware of but never tried. Sometimes it requires a lot of chutzpa to walk into ethnic stores and restaurants that seem to only cater to the people of that ethnicity, as if I were intruding in their private sphere. Being a part of a tour partially numbed that sense of intrusion (I don't know if it's a good thing of not, though), and made it easier to enjoy the unfamiliar food.

If I were to choose one "most fun" place from our tour, I would pick Dulce Landia. With hundreds of different candies piled high and lots of colorful piñatas (those paper dolls stuffed with sweets, which blindfolded Mexican children attacks fiercely with a stick on festive occasions) hanging from the ceiling, it reminded me of the candy stores I went to as a kid in Japan. Danielle, who was volunteering to give a tour, recommended two traditional sweets: goat milk caramels (called "cajetas") and a chewy candy made of tamarindo and sugar, coated with chili powder. I liked the tamarindo candy a lot. Sweet, sour and spicy at once, it reminded me of something I'd had before. Though the sense of palate nostalgia was quite wonderful, I couldn't locate the memory of that flavor. I might have had something similar in my childhood in Bangkok, or maybe I was conflating it with a similar Japanese candy made from sugar and pickled plums. Either way, those tamarindo candies were addictively distinctive. Another pleasant surprise was marzapan-like sweets made from peanut powder. Fragile and delicate, it burst with the nutty peanut flavor when put into my mouth. Since there's a Dulce Landia within a few minutes' walk from our apartment, we'll probably revisiting them pretty soon.

I was curious how an American Slow Food movement would establish its identity in a country where there is no truly "traditional" cuisine that lives on as a part of our everyday life (as there are in Italy). I still need to process what I heard and saw during the tour to really wright about this, but joining the tour was definitely an interesting experience, both in seeing a community I'd never been to and in hearing a small part of what the Slow Food people are thinking right here in Chicago.

A family waiting to get their cups of cool horchata

It's going to be HOT today--the highs predicted to be in the mid-90s. Argh. But then again, Chicago's hot day is nothing compared to hot days in Japan, thanks to the usually low humidity. It's hot, but not stifling. (I was brutally reminded of this difference when I went back to Japan for the first time in three years, on the first day of that year's real hot day. At 7 am, it was already steamy, and by the time we arrived at the Tsukiji fish market on foot around 7:30, my back was a cascade of sweat. Yuck.)

To survive the appetite-killing, hot and humid summer, which lasts from mid-July to late September, Japanese people heavily rely on a variety of chilled noodles. Some traditional ones include udon (thick, wheat-based noodles), soba (delicate, buckwheat-based ones), hiyamugi (spaghetti-thin noodles made of wheat) and somen (even thinner, wheat-based noodles). All of these could be served hot or chilled, but in summer, we eat them overwhelmingly chilled. There's been some foreign influences as well, mainly from neighboring China and Korea. Hiyashi Chuka (chilled Chinese noodles) uses ramen-like noodles and features refreshingly sour, vinegar-based sauce, while spicy, chewy Kankoku Reimen (Korean chilled noodles; naengmyon) has recently achieved a prominent position in the summer chilled noodle war.

I love all kinds of chilled noodles, but here's a basic one: Hiyashi Udon (chilled udon). Since this is my food blog, the recipe is going to be slightly cheat-esque, as usual. You need udon noodles, and pre-made all-purpose sauce mix.

First, boil a large pot of water. Just like you would do when boiling pasta, you should use a lot of water to boil udon. This prevents the noodles from rubbing against each other excessively, which can create slimy coating around them. Follow the instruction on the udon package as to how long it needs to be boiled.

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Traditionally, the sauce comes on the side, and the noodles are dipped in the sauce as you eat them. But this method leads to a lot of leftover sauce, so I usually make a more concentrated version of the dipping sauce and pour it over the noodles. The instruction on the sauce mix bottle usually assumes that you're using it as a dipping sauce, so you can just increase the proportion of the sauce mix to the water, in order to make the pourable sauce. Some aromatic ingredients I mix in this basic sauce are pickled plums (chopped and made into a smooth paste), wasabi, green onions, ginger, sesame paste (tahini sauce could be used), etc. (but not everything at once!). Pickled plum sauce is especially nice in hot summer months, because it adds just enough sourness to the dish to make it refreshing when your body's too hot and exhausted to feel hungry.

Now, when the noodles are done, strain and wash them under cold, running water. This process eliminates the slimy stuff on the surface, while instantly firming up the noodles, giving them a nice, resilient texture. Shake the water off the noodles and place them on plates, then pour the sauce over it. I used some chopped scallions and ground sesame seeds this time, and added flavored boiled eggs (a leftover from this meal. (The two dishes in the background are simmered ferns and spicy stir-fried baby bok choy.)

As I'm sure I'll be cooking many more of the chilled noodle dishes, there'll be a few other recipes showing up here. Stay tuned...

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Some places to get udon noodles and noodle soup mix are as follows:
Mitsuwa Marketplace
100 E. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Hts., IL
(847)956-6699
H Mart
801 Civic Center Dr., Niles, IL
847-581-1212
Sea Ranch 518 Dempster St., Evanston, IL
847-492-8340
Cost Plus World Market
Various locations
Mitsuwa is probably the best place for variety, since it's a large Japanese supermarket. H Mart, a humongous, mainly Korean supermarket, has a decent selection of Japanese noodles and sauce mixes, although it could be difficult to find them in the maze-like clutter of the store. Sea Ranch is a small chain of Japanese grocery stores, and while they can't have everything in their tiny stores, they usually have a few Japanese noodles and sauce mixes to choose from. I've seen at least one kind, each, of soba and udon in Cost Plus World Market, but I'm not sure if they stock Japanese sauce mixes. Some normal supermarkets and higher-end ones like Whole Foods might have a few varieties, too.

On Memorial Day, the aroma of char-grilled burgers wafting from our neighbors' backyard (all the way up to our third-floor apartment!) was a torture. It made us crave for a few little things, all of which were denied for one reason or the other: a cute little Weber grill (no place to store), a place to grill (back porch too small, smoke detector too sensitive), etc., etc....

We thought about going to the Moody's and have a beer or two with their burgers in the outdoor patio, but this was a bad idea, too. I had a bunch of super-fresh veggies we got from the Evanston Farmers Market on Saturday, and considering I wouldn't be cooking on Tuesday, I wanted to use them now. Oyster mushrooms, in particular, were screaming to be cooked while still perky. Plus I had a chunk of fatty pork ribs (deboned) from Mitsuwa, and there was a dish I wanted to try with it. (What I did with the oyster mushrooms, I'll post tomorrow.)

The recipe (link in Japanese) I followed was Vietnamese, but a very similar dish, called "kakuni," exists in the traditional cooking of Kagoshima, a southern prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. An excellent producer of the renowned Kurobuta (Berkshire black) pork, it is no surprise that Kagoshima has developed this simple but delectable dish of fatty pork simmered in soy sauce and raw cane sugar. Kakuni was never a part of my Tokyo-born mom's repertoire, but ever since I had a collapse-under-my-chopsticks tender kakuni in an izakaya (Japanese style tapas bar), I've been a faithful lover of this simple dish. (Kakuni goes superb with shochu, barley- or sweet potato- based liquor, another Kagoshima specialty. And thus, kakuni is often found on izakaya menus.)

The only reason I forwent Japanese recipe over the Vietnamese one is that I wanted to experiment more with the Vietnamese coconut caramel that I picked up a few weeks ago (and made an awesome fried rice). I was stunned to find the god-awful amount of sugar the recipe required, but since it was the first time I cook this dish myself, I faithfully followed the sucroseful recipe for two:

1. Marinate chunks of deboned pork ribs in 1 tablespoon of Nam Pla (or Nuoc Mam), 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 tablespoon of caramel sauce, a clove of minced garlic and black pepper. Let it sit in the fridge for an hour.
2. Sautée the pork in a frying pan so that all the exterior is nicely browned.
3. Pour the remaining marinade into a pot. Add 3 tablespoons of Nam Pla, 2 tablespoons of sugar, one dried hot pepper, and place the pork in the pot. Add some water so that the pork chunks are half immersed in the sauce. Simmer for an hour or so.

I boiled two eggs and grilled (without oil) some sliced sweet potatoes and added them into the simmering pot at the end of the cooking time, but this is a tasty but dispensable flourish if in a pinch. (The original recipe only calls for pork and eggs. The idea of sweet potatoes came from the fact that Kagoshima, the birthplace of kakuni, also produces a lot of sweet potatoes, only some of which are brewed into shochu.) As the kakuni simmered down, the wonderfully rich aroma of fish sauce and caramel filled the kitchen and then the dining room, and mostly dispelled the annoyingly enticing smell of the backyard barbecue. I quickly made a few other dishes with the fresh veggies from the farmers market, and by 5:30, we were enjoying the fatty pork and sweet potatoes. By 6, we were happily intoxicated. Intoxicated enough, indeed, to watch an episode of A-Team, which both of us adored as kids. But alas, a bottle of Stella Artois was not nearly enough to stop me from remarking: "I have no idea why I loved this show! This is awful!"

We promptly switched to a few episodes of The Black Adder. No barbecue, but it was a good Memorial Day feast. At least there weren't any severed enemy heads on our table...

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Takkatsu is the best place to sample how good Kurobuta can be in a breaded-and-fried form. (Full review coming soon, since we love this place.)
161 W. Wing St., Arlington Heights, IL
847.818.1860

Yes, ferns are edible. Well, some of them are.

Japanese people used to forage for wile mushrooms and plants in the good ol' days. Now, with too many people living too far away from the mountains, there are packages of pre-poached wild plants available at supermarkets. Some of them are mixtures: several different kinds of ferns, baby bamboo shoots and some mushrooms. Others are single-species, the most common of this being the royal ferns ("zenmai" in Japanese).

Koreans also make use of the royal ferns for their tasty namul (variously seasoned vegetables). So, it shouldn't have been such a surprise to find a package of pre-poached zenmai in the refrigerated section of the H Mart, but I was surprised when I did. It was a delightful surprise, though, because I love zenmai with fried tofu. I picked one up, and went home, already tasting the (imaginary) taste of this traditional Japanese dish.

When we were still in Japan, my mom sometimes got a big bunch of zenmai from her friends with connections with people in the country, most likely their aging parents or their siblings who stayed in the rural hometown. When she did, she would boil the stems of zenmai in water with baking soda to wash out the harsh, tongue-biting flavor. Then she'd dry them, occasionally rolling them under her palms to tenderize them. When she needs the zenmai later, she'd just have to rehydrate them. All this, of course, is a lot of work. This is where the pre-poached ones come in handy.

Your best bet is to blanch the pre-poached zenmai before use. This gets rid of the possibly odd flavor that it might have acquired while in the package. Squeeze the water out of the zenmai, and boil it for a minute or so. Drain. An important step here is to take a few ladles of boiling water before you put the zenmai in, and pour it over abura-age (thin fried tofu), to rinse off the excess oil.

To make my favorite zenmai dish, you use the method called "itame-ni." "Itame" refers to stir-frying, while "ni" refers to simmering in thin sauce. Stir-frying before simmering adds nice richness to the otherwise very light dish. So, start with frying chopped ginger in sesame oil. When the wonderful aroma of ginger starts to rise from the pot, add (boiled and strained) zenmai. Stir-fry it for a few minutes, until the zenmai is lightly coated with oil. Add small pieces of abura-age, and pour a few tablespoons of all-purpose fish stock. Let it simmer for a while.

Abura-age is that thin, fried bag of tofu that holds the sushi rice in Inari-zushi. I haven't seen them anywhere other than Japanese markets, but they may be available in other Asian markets as well. For some reason, they aren't as popular as the thick fried tofu, which could also be used for this dish. When using the thick fried tofu, don't forget to rinse off the oil, too!

All-purpose fish stock is usually sold with the label of "soup base for noodles" in Japanese and other Asian markets. (I've also seen an overpriced version at the Southport Grocery as well; it must be making its way into the mainstream market.) It's basically a mixture of bonito and/or konbu stock, soy sauce and sugar. Given its versatility and long fridge life, it's probably worth keeping at hand if you're interested in cooking Japanese.

Back to the "zenmai itame-ni..."

It keeps in the fridge for about five days. The pre-poached version has less of the wild, earthy flavor of the zenmai, but it's still quite good--even soothing for an exiled Japanese soul--with the familiar mix of bonito stock, soy sauce and sugar. Good with sake, this dish is also a "rice thief," as we call dishes that entice you to eat more rice with it.

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H Mart
801 Civic Drive, Niles, IL

Southport Grocery
3552 N. Southport Ave., Chicago, IL
773.665.0100

I recently discovered an "atomic bomb of Vietnamese cuisine," as Patrick has put it.

We picked up the condiment in question in the South East Asian aisle at our beloved H Mart. When I spotted its rather simple label that said "Coconut Thin Sauce," I figured it would taste like coconut, which I absolutely adore ever since my childhood in the tropical Bangkok. The ingredients list was überclean: coconut, and water. It was cheap, too, at $1.19 for a little squeeze bottle. So we picked one up. Why not?

When we got home, I squeezed a drop of the sauce onto my palm and licked it. The sauce was pretty thick; I don't know why it's called "thick" sauce. It didn't taste like coconut, either. All the coconut flavor must have wafted out when the coconut juice was simmered down to its thick, brown reduction, I thought. Although the sauce was not what I'd expected it to be, it had an awesomely complex flavor of very good caramel sauce. Curious, I went online. According to the explanation on a Vietnamese cook's food site, Nuoc Mau Dua (as it's called in Vietnamese) is a caramel sauce widely used in Southern Vietnamese cuisine.

So what to do with this sauce?

I had half a head of purple cabbage approaching a sorry state in the fridge, so I decided to make fried rice with it. For seasoning, I simply mixed about a generous tablespoon of the coconut thin sauce with a bit less amount of Nam Pla (Thai fish sauce). The Nam Pla I have (from the Thai Kitchen brand) is extremely salty, so you might need more if you have a less salty version--just taste test the sauce before adding it to the food.

I sautéed minced garlic in oil, added cabbage, and stir-fried it for a few minutes. I spooned some sauce into a beaten egg and added that to the pan, while stirring. In went the rice, chopped green onions and cilantro, and when the rice grains were nicely separated from each other, I poured the sauce over everything. An appetizing aroma of bittersweet caramel and Nam Pla immediately rose to my nostrils, but it wasn't done yet. I turned the heat off, and crushed some roasted soy beans (in lieu of peanuts) to sprinkle over the fried rice.

I probably shouldn't be giving so many pats on my own back, but good god, it was divine. The bitterness of the caramel sauce added that extra depth that's hard to achieve in an amateur's kitchen. (I've used the combination of sugar and Nam Pla many times, but the caramely goodness just can't be beat with this very similar yet very different combination.) The fried rice tasted like it had been cooked in a real Vietnamese restaurant. I wish I had dried mini shrimps and real peanuts (instead of soy nuts) for real South East Asian flair, but even without these flavor enhancers, the coconut thin sauce more than held up this simple dish.

Apparently the Vietnamese cooks often keep a jar of (either home-made or store-bought) caramel sauce at hand, and that's what they use for their magnificent ginger chicken in clay pot (Gai Kho). I'm definitely going to try making that soon, for it's one of Patrick's favorite foods in the world (and I'm yet to try it). Nuoc Mau Dua is cheap, just about the easiest to use, and packed with butt-kicking flavor bursts, so I'm going to keep it around in my increasingly condiments-cluttered small kitchen.

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H Mart
801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL
847.581.1212

I got mine at the H Mart, but I'm sure the sauce is available in many Asian grocery stores that cater to the Vietnamese clientele. Viet Hoa Plaza at 1051 W. Argyle St. might be your good bet, too.

I've been locked up in the apartment, writing my last term papers for a few days now. Yesterday, I skipped lunch. I was completely papered out and didn't feel like cooking anything. That was a bad idea--by the time Patrick came home, I was pretty grumpy. Even worse, I forgot that it was Patrick's birthday. (Low blood sugar can do a multitude of harm to you...it's not that I stopped loving my lovely boyfriend...you're reading this, Patrick, right?) At any rate, no lunch is a bad idea particularly for me.

So, today, not to repeat the same mistake within 24 hours, I decided to make something quick for lunch. I remembered that we had a large bag of frozen Kimchi (or Kimchee--spicy Korean pickled cabbage) dumplings in the freezer. The dumplings came from our friend H Mart in Niles, a gigantic Korean supermarket with rows after rows of frozen Korean and Chinese dumplings we have yet to try. I also had half a daikon radish and a handful of wakame (Japanese seaweed you most likely find in your miso soup), so I went for a quick dumpling soup.

Because I'm a lazy chef (especially when I'm cooking for only myself), I didn't bother making my own broth. I simply boiled some water and threw in a teaspoon of Chinese chicken soup mix (the red can in the photo). This brand isn't my favorite--this soup has an unpleasant odor of (probably) chicken, and the artificial flavoring in it tastes like, well, artificial flavoring. So I added a bit of minced ginger to tame those unwelcome flavor elements.

Then I cut up the daikon into thin, fan-shaped bits, threw them in, and while they danced in the hot water, I chopped up some green onions. I also washed the preserving salt off the fresh wakame and cut them into small pieces. When the daikon bits were close to being done, I took out a few frozen dumplings and slid them into the boiling soup. (It takes about 6-7 minutes for the dumplings to cook from the frozen state.)

Toward the end, I added the green onions and wakame bits, ground some black pepper into the pot, and drizzled a bit of sesame oil (a must for any Korean dish!). All in all, it took me about twenty minutes from the start to the end, and that includes the time-consuming photographing part, so you can safely bet on cooking this delicious soup within fifteen minutes.

The dumplings could have been a bit spicier, but otherwise, it was a very satisfying meal. My brain is up and running again, and I won't forget Patrick's birthday--only that it'll be a year from today! I'll have to keep my brain well-fed for quite a long time now...

The salmon pink of the kimchi showed beautifully through the half-translucent skin of the dumplings. Yum!

Having found a nice fillet of red snapper at the H Mart (a gigantic Korean supermarket in Niles), I decided to plan the day's dinner around the snapper.

For seasoning, I tried the Ras El Hanout mix from Spice House. Directly translated to "the best of the shop," Ras El Hanout (رأس الحانوت) is a slightly floral blend of mainly Indian spices like cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and chili pepper. It's widely used in Middle East and North Africa--Ras El Hanout is an indispensable spice mix for lots of Moroccan meat dishes, and sometimes is used in almond pies and couscous. I wouldn't have known its existence, if Tom hadn't given me a small pouch of it a few months back. Ever since I huffed the mix, I've been in love with its subtle complexity and versatile use. (Plus it's close enough to the Japanese curry mix that I'm used to, so it's easier for me to figure out what the Ras El Hanout might be good with.) So, I rubbed the Ras El Hanout, salt and pepper onto the fillets, and lightly dusted them on both sides to give them crispy edges, then sautéd them in olive oil and rosemary.

For the side, I did a crossover dish: Japanese ingredients cooked Western way. I cut up about two inches of Daikon radish, a medium-sized golden Yukon potato and a handful of snow peas. Daikon and potatoes were then thrown into garlic butter in a pot. When the two veggies were slightly browned here and there, I added just enough water to cover the pieces, stirred in a pinch of chicken bouillon, and simmered them for a while. When it's just about done, I added the snow peas and a few sage leaves (from the baby sage plant growing in our container garden by the living room window) and cooked them on low heat.

As it turned out, the nameless veggie dish was better than the red snapper (though I might be biased--I love veggies). The slight hint of sage and the earthy bitterness of the fat, squat Korean daikon was a perfect combination. Butter added just enough richness to the mix--I could eat that all day long!

Although the Ras El Hanout is usually used for meat dishes, it worked fine on the red snapper. Tradition has it that Ras El Hanout is an aphrodisiac, but I didn't feel any hornier after eating the snapper than before. Maybe I should have been more generous about the amount of the spice (haha). Or maybe the spice mix made the snapper horny: its flesh had wonderful firmness to it, something that's pretty difficult to find around Chicago (supermarkets don't seem to know how to handle their fish here!). With a glass of Chardonnay (using it to make sauce for the fish provided us a good excuse to open it) and slices of Tuscan bread, it was a satisfying meal.

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H Mart
801 Civic Center Drive, Niles, IL
847.581.1212

Spice House
Evanston: 1941 Central Street, Evanston, IL
847.328.3711
Old Town (Chicago): 1512 N. Wells Street, Chicago, IL
312.274.0378